RELIEF FOR NOW
| Date :19-Jul-2019 |
BY ITS overwhelming verdict, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague, on Wednesday, slammed Pakistan’s arbitrary justice delivery system and asked it to review and reconsider the conviction of former Indian Naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav. Till this process of providing proper legal and consular access to Mr. Jadhav is completed and due course of law is followed, the ICJ has suspended the death sentence awarded to him by a Pakistani military court. While passing this significant verdict in favour of India, the International Court has asked the Pakistan Government to take recourse to legislative remedy for reviewing the military court’s verdict to allow consular and legal access to Mr. Jadhav.
The 15-1 verdict against Pakistan clearly showed how Pakistan was brazen in denying consular access to Mr. Jadhav in violation of the Vienna Convention. While Wednesday’s verdict of the ICJ comes as a great relief, the Indian team of legal experts and functionaries in the Government of India would be disappointed that their plea to annul the conviction, release Mr. Jadhav and allow his safe passage home has not been accepted. So the battle for saving Mr. Jadhav’s life and getting him back home, hale and hearty, still remains unfinished.
The first task that is to be ensured is that Indian consular officials in Islamabad get in touch with Mr. Jadhav and provide him the necessary legal assistance immediately. It is, no doubt, going to be a long haul as it had been so far. But the Indian legal brains, the bureaucratic teams, the then External Affairs Minister Mrs. Sushma Swaraj and the Government of India’s unstinted support at every stage of the case deserve all the compliments for ensuring that the Indian official’s case was put in proper perspective before the International Court. That they got the overwhelming 15-1 verdict in Mr, Jadhav’s favour is a tribute to their brilliance as well as their hard work.
The Government, especially, deserves compliments for swinging into action soon after the Pakistan military court convicted Mr. Kulbhushan Jadhav on concocted charges of espionage and terrorism and ,besides seeking legal remedies at the International Court of Justice, also mounted heavy diplomatic pressure to nail Pakistan’s lies, especially in Mr. Jadhav’s case and how farcical and devoid of any legal standing the military trial had been. The legal team too has been able to establish this fact before the ICJ in a very convincing manner and how all international norms of justice had been violated in denying Mr. Jadhav any legal assistance or consular access which was due to him. During the course of the trial at the ICJ Pakistan kept on presenting concocted alibis that defied logic and even were far from truth. All these were torn apart by the Indian legal team and were dismissed by the ICJ. Falsification of facts by the Pakistani legal team were exposed time and again during the course of the two-year legal battle and the Indian team was ready with its rebuttal.
At one point the Pakistan team even denied that Jadhav was an Indian national and on another occasion they referred to him as an Indian spy. All such falsehoods were thoroughly exposed. Now the ball has again been put into Pakistani court and the Indian legal luminaries and Government officials would be ready to rebut any Pakistani jugglery to prove Mr. Jadhav as a terrorist and an Indian spy. It now transpires that the Jadhav case heavily hinges on the diplomatic exercise that may come into play in the next few days and months. Because more diplomatic pressure is likely to be exerted on Pakistan in this matter as well as has been in the case of Hafeez Sayeed, the terror mastermind, whom Pakistan has been forced to arrest on charges of terror funding under international compelling force recently.